Yesterday, Gartner published research that shows that the “bring your own device” trend could possibly reinforce that tendency.

Gartner says that the shift to mobile is so rapid and massive that the problem of managing this jungle of mobile devices is moving to the top of the priority list for IT departments. It says mobile is “influencing mainstream strategies and tactics” in how enterprises deal with their ICT needs.

Enterprises, who can hardly control the choices of their employees when it comes to smartphones and tablets, are increasingly looking for applications that work “across multiple platforms”, says Gartner:

With enterprises under extreme pressure from management and employees to develop and deploy mobile applications to accommodate mobile work styles and increase customer engagement, Gartner predicts that more than 50 percent of mobile apps deployed by 2016 will be hybrid.

This means that mobile is becoming so big and important in our lives that you have to wonder how long the device makers can keep ignoring the switching and development costs that consumers and third party developers incur. As I said earlier, it’s a bit crazy that 100 percent of smartphone users know which operating system they use. It’s a sign that choosing an OS might be just a bit too important today.

One other thing: the biggest winner of consumerization will be Apple, says Gartner: by 2014, Apple will be “as accepted by enterprise IT as Microsoft is today”. Consumerization is mostly a force that pushes Apple iPhones, iPads and Macbooks into the enterprise.

Would love to hear your thoughts. Especially if someone can draw a clear comparison between the old battles of Mac/Microsoft/Linux/… on desktop computers. I also wonder what the increasingly dominant position of Android – more than half the market and growing faster than all others – might mean in this regard (source):